Sponsored results

Sponsored results: AI chatbot Perplexity is tapping into the billion-dollar digital ad industry. Brands will bid for a “sponsored” question featuring an AI-generated answer that will include them. Marketers will pay $50 or more for every 1,000 impressions generated by these posts (paywall link). A $50 CPM (cost per thousand) is really high for this.

Tags: AI (artificial intelligence), chatbot, digital, Link


Companies and agencies that want to read your body parts

Have you paid with your palm at Whole Foods yet? Did the TSA scan your face the last time you were at the airport? Using biometric info like your fingerprint and face can save a little time, but a whole lot of security risks come along for the ride.

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Can your phone be rigged to explode?

This past week, a frenzy of small explosions rocked Lebanon, causing thousands of injuries and killing at least 25 people. The cause? Thousands of Apollo AR924 pagers and ICOM walkie-talkies blew up in the hands of members of Hezbollah leaders and their families.

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33 days

How long the average home cook spends planning Thanksgiving. That’s two weeks each on the guest list and menu planning, plus three days of food prep and cooking. Get going! You don’t want to make Thanksgiving a cluster-pluck.

1 in 5 remote workers

Naps during the workday. A new survey revealed 33% of remote workers take calls in the bathroom and 17% watch TV or play video games. Working hard or hardly working?

1x a week

How often the National Security Agency says you should reboot your phone. Sounds like a no-brainer, but it works to combat zero-click exploits. Zero-click flaws mean a hacker can get in simply by sending you the right code. Avoiding that is def worth a weekly restart.

$1 million-plus invested

Into an old cruise ship purchased on Craigslist. A tech entrepreneur spent 15 years restoring the 293-foot vessel. It was built in Germany in 1955, inspired “The Love Boat” and was in the 1963 Bond movie “From Russia with Love.” After they decided to sell the slice of history, it mysteriously took on water and was decommissioned. Weird, right?

PayPal.com, Pentagram.com
PayPal.com, Pentagram.com

Heads-up: PayPal changed its logo. If you see this one in your inbox or on their website, it’s not a scam.

47% of Gen Z

Wishes TikTok didn’t exist. Half think the same about X (yeah, I still think of it as Twitter). The average time per day spent on social media? Four hours. You can’t convince me it’s anything other than addiction.

9.9 miles

New world record for how far a Wi-Fi signal can reach. The testing happened in Joshua Tree National Park, which is ideal, given how little interference there is. I know what you’re thinking: “I can’t get decent Wi-Fi in my house!”

3,601 chemicals

From food packaging have been found in the human body. Researchers found about 25% of the roughly 14,000 chemicals used in packaging in blood, hair or breast milk samples. This is your friendly reminder to stop microwaving plastic.